John Funk

John Funk

John Funk probably arrived at the ranch the same way as a good many of the other ranch
hands: Steve would to the Tucumcari jail and bail out railroad crew who had gotten drunk
when paid off after a shift. John stayed at the ranch for many years – over thirty — and
reliably handled both the gardening and the laundry as well as a good many other
household chores. Once a year Steve or Stephen would take him to town for a haircut and
necessary purchases, but if he had so much as a half-dollar in his pocket, he’d manage to
get drunk and often had to be bailed out again.
John was from Uvalde, Texas, and claimed that he had known the Vice President of the
United States — John Nance Garner of Uvalde, who served under Franklin Roosevelt
1933-1941 — a claim regarded with doubt by the Triggs, but later substantiated. [Did
Funk go to school with his son, Tully Charles Garner, b. 1896?]
John Funk’s one-acre garden was marvelous. Adaline wrote, “[he] grew enough
vegetables to feed everyone in San Miguel County. John’s winter diversion was studying
Burpee’s catalog and making seed orders. He grew everything—including kohlrabi and
artichokes. John’s produce made the Trigg girls popular with mothers of the young men
who came visiting for a weekend at the ranch; in summer their cars were always laden
with ‘excess’ as they left.” Often the railroad crew would find themselves in possession
of bushels of something or other.
The lower half of the garden, where he grew potatoes, had been abandoned by the 1940s.
The upper half flourished, irrigated from the pond above supplied by the wonderful Dog
Canyon spring. Photos taken in 1924 show that fruit trees had already been planted –
pear, peach, apricot, apple. I remember not only vegetables – tomatoes, peas and beans,
onions and asparagus, squash of all kinds, and a big bush of artichokes — but also
flowers for Nana: sweet peas on a frame near the spirea which hid the propane tank, and
hollyhocks along the drive. I suppose John also saw to the rest of the yard, to the bright
zinnias all along the drive, and to the iris and roses Nana loved, which still bloom in the
spring. There were hotbeds where John started his seeds. Mother remembers that John
spent the winters reading seed catalogues, and that he grew vegetables amazing in
quantity, quality, and variety. I was a young child in the 1940s and I don’t remember the
more exotic vegetables nor the ones I didn’t like; but I do remember being intrigued by
all the different plants and John’s patience in telling me what they were. I especially
remember going to sleep or waking in my bed on the screened porch and loving to look at
the tall pear tree with its triangular shape and all its secondary branches growing straight
up.
John’s tomatoes were superb. The story was told of one visit by Pa Who (James Whittle,
Nana’s father), who was offered sliced tomatoes (probably with homemade mayonnaise)
at supper one night, and found them so delicious that he “believed he’d just have
tomatoes, thank you.” Next day and the next he ate “only tomatoes, thank you, ma’am.”
After that he “didn’t believe he’d have any more tomatoes, thank you, ma’am.”
John had a devoted little tan-and-white terrier-type mutt named Tramp. You could always
tell where John was: if he was in the kitchen, Tramp was curled under the climbing rose
by the back door; if he had gone to his room — the north bedroom, closest to the barn —
Tramp would be curled up on his doorstep. Except when Tramp and Otto, Stephen’s
bloodhound, were carrying out their duty to announce and escort every arriving vehicle,
from way beyond the corrals to the patio: arf arf aoooff aoooff arf aoooff…
John also saw to some household chores, such as cleaning all the kerosine lanterns every
morning. Anyone who lingered in the kitchen would, however, be treated to an endless
monologue, much of it about his childhood and other memories; he never paused and his
victim would finally have to walk out in mid-sentence.
John was also responble for the chickens. That meant he had to kill, pluck, and clean the
chickens to be fried for Sunday dinner; anyone coming to the house from the barn late on
a Saturday morning walked by the headless, bleeding chickens hanging upside down
from a branch near the path. Tom remembers a story that John displayed to people sitting
on the screen porch a snake he had caught in the chicken house which had a couple of
egg-sized lumps midway; as he was holding it up by the tail the eggs slid out, fell to the
ground, and broke.s
Mondays were, of course, laundry days, and John boiled all the linens and clothes in a
huge iron pot near the spigot halfway to the barn. He started with the napkins, kitchen
towels, and sheets; when the whites were done he rinsed them in a slightly smaller kettle
close by, and worked his way through Nana’s washdresses to grubby work clothes and
rags. Some things were starched in a still-smaller kettle. I have vague memories of a
hand-wringer. Everything was hung to dry on the clotheslines just north of the Milk
House. On Tuesdays everything got ironed, with sad-irons heated on the kitchen stove, I
think.
I don’t remember when John left the ranch for a nursing home in Alcalde, NM, but it was
probably in the early 1950s; Louise and Mother visited him, and I remember sitting in the
car in a narrow lane watching a piece of barbed wire appear through an adobe wall and a
new window being sawed out. I suppose John is buried in Alcalde.

LMD 10/09